Harlem Was Not A War Zone, Dear White People

Many years ago when I was still a graduate student, I was accosted by a professor, a white lady, newly trained with a PhD from one of the renowned institutions in this country for help on her research. I was in Statistics and she was a Sociologist. She needed statistical analysis on a project – paid of course. I obliged, for the love of money I guess, or the lack thereof of any in my pocket.

It didn’t take long for her to inquire about my humble beginnings – where I was raised and what I believed in. I told her I was born and bred in Harlem, “USA”.

“Oh, that is a war zone,” she said. This was 2003. She started looking at me with a worried look, as to query, “Are you okay? My Lord.”

“Have you been there?” I asked. “I have driven through it when I visited my fiance at Columbia University,” she said.

I stopped telling my story. I asked her where she grew up and she answered sumptuously, but I forget. I am sure it was a white neighborhood alright. Only I failed to ask her how many Black men had been shot there – or how many Black women had been severely beaten by stick – recently in her neighborhood for no law enforcement reason.

But, I had to control myself. I needed the money!

I was so stupefied by her response. As a Black man I had quite never heard anyone refer to my neighborhood – 125^th and Lennox Avenue – as a war zone. Never! In retrospect I wished I had asked her what she meant by that statement. But what would you expect? Harlem, “is a war zone!” She believed it.

So I am not surprised when American Law Enforcement, those who are ordained by law to protect us in our neighborhoods, continue to say they do a “dangerous job” free of charge for Black people. I know they believe what they say. I have met them.

So many white people I have encountered still believe that South Philly, Harlem, The Bronx, Brooklyn, West Philly, North Philly, Baltimore and the list goes on are in fact war zones – Bazookas blazing, bombs dropping and grenades flying at every corner and every way you turn. If you are white, you must speed through it, you must hurry through or else, you will die!

So America’s white law enforcement would dispatch white cops into our neighborhoods in the name of keeping the peace in this war zone – as in a peace keeping force. This is how Black communities in the media have come to be viewed by white people – war zones!

I have lived in Black neighborhoods all my life, but I have never lived in a war zone. I have lived in places where I see white cops arresting innocent Black people every day though. I have seen white cops harassing our women every day though. I have seen white cops stopping and frisking my friends and I for absolutely no law enforcement reason though.

I have even seen white cops plant weed on friends who have ended up spending most of their lives in jail. But I still haven’t lived in a war zone. Not yet.

I often hear the argument that police killings of Black men are a red herring because the biggest threat to Blacks is other Blacks. The latter part is true. Where the perpetrator has been identified, 93 percent of murderers of Blacks are also Black.

Then again, it’s equally true that 84 percent of murderers of whites are fellow white people.

So?

In Europe the white statistic is even stark. In Sweden, 100 percent of murderers of whites are whites!

And so?

But that is exactly the point. The Black statistic is only sited to beef up white cop patrols in Black neighborhoods. Alas, to feed the Prison Industrial Complex? Why else?

Police officers, and their supporters, continue to harbor this erroneous belief about the level of danger they face at the workplace – or they lie about it – especially when it comes to Black community patrol.

According to the US Bureau of labor Statistics, Policing is not even one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America. “76 law enforcement officers were killed in the line-of-duty in 2013” by FBI reports. Of these, 27 law enforcement officers died as a result of felonious acts. The rest were accidents.

So out of approximately 900,000 police officers in the U.S., 27 die as a result of felonies. That gives a result of about 3 per 100,000 versus the FBI’s statistics for the rest of the American population at 4.7 murders and manslaughter put together per 100,000 people.

There is only one explanation for all of this. White law enforcement has constructed a myth about itself – a propaganda. A propaganda that white communities continue to ruminate on and believe, like my graduate school employer. A significant number of white cops who police Black neighborhoods see themselves patrolling the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah and Afghanistan rather than a part of the USA.

Essentially, white cops have turned themselves into forces of occupation in Black neighborhoods to entrench this belief – that “Harlem is a war zone” and the peace must be kept at all cost. The have dramatized the concept of policing to the extent that they see themselves as Rambos and Commandos fighting the next hoard of dark skinned Hulk Hogans!

Everywhere white cops turn in Black neighborhoods, there is a dark Hulk Hogan ready to lunge at them and kill them.

So why can’t they give the job to Black men to do? Why can’t Black men patrol their own neighborhoods? I have a graduate degree in statistics from a well renowned institution, and since I can’t find a decent job, I sure would like to police my own neighborhood with the friends I grew up with.

Will America give us that? No!

Because that is not what law enforcement in this country is about. They are bent on feeding Black bodies to their Prison Industrial Complex for absolutely no reason but money! Or they are bent on bankrupting Black men and their families of the little they already make through outrageous ticketing and fines. No two ways about it.

I took my pay check after my project with the newly hired white lady assistant professor at my college, never again to talk to her about Harlem, where I was born and raised.

Harlem, USA! It was never a war zone until white politicians and their fellow white cops, for the love of money, turned it into America’s Breeding Grounds for their privately owned Prison Industrial Complex – ‘war zone’ in the minds of so many white Americans.